1. By the sun and its morning brightness,

2. …and the moon when it follows it by rising when the sun set,

3. …and the day when it displays it – when it is high in the sky,

4. …and the night when it conceals it and envelops it with its darkness,

5. …and the sky and what erected it,

6. …and the earth and what extended it,

7. …and the self – meant generically – and what proportioned it,

8. …and inspired it with depravity or fear of Allah – made clear to it the path of good and evil!

9. He who purifies it of wrong actions has succeeded;

10. …he who covers it up by acts of disobedience has failed.

11. Thamud denied in their excessive tyranny and insolence; the Messenger to Thamüd was Salih,

12. …when the worst of them rushed ahead – this was a man named Quddar who rushed to hamstring the camel with their approval –

13. …and the Messenger of Allah – Salih – had said to them, ‘This is the she-camel of Allah, so let her drink on her day!’ They alternated at the water source – one day for the She-camel and the next day for them.

14. But they denied him when he said that that the instruction was from Allah; and as a consequence of their disobeying the punishment of Allah descended on them – and they hamstrung her – and killed the She-camel so that they could have the water that she drank. So their Lord crushed them with the punishment for their sin and flattened them: in other words, He totally enveloped them in it so that none of them escaped.

15. And (read as wala and fala) He does not fear the consequences.